published February 23, 2024
YOU CALL THAT EVIDENCE!? A security guard was arrested for killing a woman who was found dead in a Colorado creek when police found her severed hand in his pocket.
IS THERE NO HONOR AMONG THIEVES? Three masked men brandishing weapons robbed a check-cashing service in Commerce City, Colo, and then ran outside to discover that someone had stolen their getaway car. The cops, who arrested two of the perpetrators, said it was likely that they had previously stolen the car before committing the robbery.
ARRRRGH, MATEY! WHAT ARE YE BOTHERIN’ ME FOR? A man, who was high on magic mushrooms, started pounding on the front door of a home in Elba, Fla., and a vehicle parked nearby. The homeowner asked him to leave, but he would not comply, so he called the cops, who found him sitting in his pickup truck with a parrot on his shoulder.
WORDS TO LIVE BY: An 18-year-old man fled from a Utah state trooper and led police on a 130-mph pursuit with no lights on, ran three red lights, and when the cops boxed him in, he accelerated backwards crashing into a trooper’s vehicle. He said he ran from the cops because his driver’s license wasn’t valid, and he rammed the patrol car because, “F*** it man, I’m already so deep might as well go through ya’ll.”
HE PULLS A METAL ROD, YOU PULL A SHOVEL; THAT’S THE VANCOUVER WAY: A naked man broke into the home of a 72-year-old woman in Vancouver, British Columbia, and started swinging at her with a pointed metal rod. She grabbed a shovel and fought back until the cops — who were alerted by neighbors – showed up and arrested him.
I’M AS SURPRISED AS YOU ARE, OFFICER! A man got busted after he forgot to brush off the meth on his driver’s license when he handed it over to cops during a traffic stop near Lake Hatchineha, Fla. He claimed he didn’t know there were any drugs on the license and said there was nothing illegal in the car., but there was: a large amount of meth between the driver’s seat and center console.
WHY HER!? IS SOMETHING WRONG WITH ME!? A Miami Beach woman tried to kill her husband of 52 years after he received a postcard from an ex-girlfriend he dated some 60 years ago. Police said that some aspect of the long-gone lover’s decades-later outreach greatly angered the defendant, who first tried to smother her husband with a pillow. She also urinated on him.
OH, GREAT! YOU’VE FOUND MY CAR! WHAT PROBLEM? A man stole a car from a home in Tillamook, Ore., then disregarded signs and drove down a closed road and fell into a hole caused by a landslide. Police found the car upside down and on fire. An hour later, the owner called 911 to report that the car had been stolen.
Mike Pingree – for RevereBeach.com
Mike Pingree is a native of Lynn, MA and has written the offbeat “Through The Looking Glass” column for 35 years. For many years it appeared locally in the Boston Sunday Herald, and at one point was distributed to 283 newspapers in the United States by Tribune Media Services of Chicago and to 300 college papers by Knight Ridder.
“Through The Looking Glass” also appeared regularly in The Star of Johannesburg, The Belfast Daily Mirror, the Bermuda Sun, Ireland on Sunday, The Barbados Daily Nation, The Sherbrooke Record in Quebec, The Daily Post in Fiji and the Central America Weekly in Costa Rica. At its highest point the column’s total worldwide circulation reached 2 million.
RevereBeach.com is pleased to bring “Through The Looking Glass” back to local readership – offering long-time journalist Pingree’s take on quirky and entertaining news items as a regular feature.
Mr. Pingree has worked as a newspaperman at the Boston Herald, USA Today, the Lawrence Eagle-Tribune and the Thomaston (Conn.) Express. He has also been a working actor for the past 15 years, appearing in short films and on stage in Boston and Newburyport. He has acted as an extra in more than 150 movies and television shows.